'We're in a full-fledged feeding frenzy': Trump just had 2 unprecedentedly tumultuous weeks

On May 4, President Donald Trump was celebrating with House
Republicans in the Rose Garden.

House Speaker Paul Ryan just successfully pushed the American
Health Care Act the chamber. And though the bill still
needed to be handled by the Senate, Trump and House Republicans
took a victory lap of sorts after the much maligned legislation
finally made it through its brutally tough initial battle.

Fast-forward to Saturday. Nearly the entire stretch since
has been consumed by two of the most tumultuous weeks in
presidential history. Bombshell story after bombshell story.
Trump's series of controversial decisions. A near-boiling point
in the investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign
colluded with Russian officials during swing the 2016
election.

As leaks became geysers, the onslaught showed no signs of slowing
down.

"I'm sort of literally at a loss of words," Alex Conant,
communications director for Sen. Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential
campaign, told Business Insider. "I've never seen so much bad
news hit a White House at once."

Here's how it all went down.

Monday, May 8

The highly anticipated event at the start of last week featured
former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former
acting Attorney General Sally Yates testifying before a
Senate Judiciary subcommittee that was investigating Russian
interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In her testimony, Yates explained her warning to the White
House about Michael Flynn, saying she was concerned the former
national security adviser could have been subject to Russian
blackmail as a result of misleading Vice President Mike Pence
about the nature of his communications with Russian Ambassador
Sergey Kislyak.

Afterward, Trump targeted both
Clapper and Yates on Twitter. On Clapper, Trump zeroed in on
a comment he made that when he retired prior to Trump's
inauguration in January, he knew of no evidence of any collusion
between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

"Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake
media already knows — there is 'no evidence' of collusion w/
Russia and Trump."

He then wrote that Yates "made the fake media extremely unhappy
today --- she said nothing but old news."

Trump then took his tweet
aimed at Clapper and, for a brief time, made it a part of his
banner image on Twitter.

Tuesday, May 9

Comey announced at a hearing in March that the FBI was
investigating whether there was any collusion between members of
the Trump campaign and Russian officials to swing the 2016
presidential election. But the initial rationale for firing the
FBI director was his handling of the investigation into
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's use of a
private email server while she was secretary of state.

Soon after, it was
reported that Trump was planning Comey's firing for days.

Inside the White House, there was a scramble to defend the
decision. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told CNN's
Anderson Cooper that the firing
was "not a cover-up." White House deputy press secretary
Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Fox News
that it was "time to move on" from the Russia
investigations.

"It's been going on for nearly a year," Sanders said. "Frankly,
it's kind of getting absurd."

James
Comey.AP Photo/Alex
Brandon

In his first remarks since the firing,
Trump decided to blast Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on
Twitter. Schumer earlier said that Trump's move to fire Comey was
"a big mistake."

Wednesday, May 10

"The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James
Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they
play so sad!" Trump
tweeted.

Then came a curious meeting: A
rendezvous in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov and Kislyak, the ambassador. Kislyak's
presence in the meeting wasn't known until a Russian photographer
posted his shots from the event, sparking a controversy over the
secrecy of the diplomatic discussion.

Following that meeting, Trump met with Henry Kissinger, the
former secretary of state and national security adviser. While
seated next to Kissinger, Trump told reporters in
the Oval Office that Comey "was not doing a good job."

Still, top Trump
surrogates — including Pence —
insisted that Trump acted after his top Department of Justice
officials recommended he fire Comey, and that it had nothing to
do with the FBI's Russia investigation.

"It only causes Democrats to smell a conspiracy around everything
Russian — while giving GOPers pause," the lobbyist told Business
Insider. In the daily press briefing, Sanders was grilled over
Comey's firing. At one point, she said the ousted FBI director
committed "atrocities" while he led the bureau.

Later, the Times reported that
after Trump made the unfounded claim that former President
Barack Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower prior to Trump's
inauguration, Comey told close associated that the president's
behavior was "outside the realm of normal" and "crazy."

When discussing the
moment he decided to fire Comey, he referenced the Russia
investigation, something that flew completely in the face of the
White House's narrative.

"When I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you
know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up
story," he said.

In the daily briefing, Sanders took another barrage of heated
questions related to Comey's firing after Trump contradicted what
she was saying hours earlier.

Sarah Huckabee
Sanders.Mark Wilson/Getty
Images

She said Comey's firing would speed up the Russia investigation.

"There are multiple people that are a part of this and it's not
just the FBI," Sanders said.
"You've got the House committee, the Senate committee and, look,
again, the point is we want this to come to its conclusion, we
want this to come to conclusion with integrity, and we think that
we've actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make
that happen."

Then came another bombshell.
The Times reported that Comey, during a January dinner, was asked
by Trump whether he would pledge loyalty to the president.

He declined to do so at least twice during the dinner, the report
said.

Friday, May 12

Trump began his day with a blistering tweetstorm.

First, he suggested that
his surrogates can't speak for him completely accurately, and
tossed the idea of canceling future press briefings as a result.

Minutes later, he threatened Comey
to stay silent and suggested he had recordings of his
conversation with the FBI director.

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our
conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" Trump wrote.

In the daily
briefing, Spicer was bombarded with questions about whether
the president was recording Comey or others who he had
conversations with in the White House.

It led to an interesting exchange with Reuters White House
correspondent Jeff Mason:

"I've talked to the president" about that tweet, Spicer said.
"The president has nothing further to add to that."

"Why did he say that?" Mason said.

"As I mentioned, the president has nothing further to add to
that," Spicer said.

"Are there recording devices in the Oval Office or the
residence?" Mason then asked.

"As I've said for the third time, there's nothing further to add
to that," Spicer responded.

"Does he think it's appropriate to threaten someone like Mr.
Comey not to speak?" Mason asked.

Monday, May 15

The Washington Post reported that Trump shared highly classified
intelligence with Lavrov and Kislyak in the secretive Oval Office
meeting. That intelligence that was so under wraps that American
allies were not aware of the information, The Post reported.

Current and former anonymous US officials said Trump's
sharing of the intelligence with the Russians jeopardized a key
source of information about the Islamic State terror group, as
the source had not given the US permission to share the
intelligence with Russia.

"Obviously they're in a downward spiral right now and they've got
to figure out a way to come to grips with all that's happening,"
he added.

Alan Dershowitz, the prolific attorney
and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said on CNN
that "this is the most serious charge ever made against a sitting
president. Let's not minimize it."

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, national security adviser H.R.
McMaster, and deputy national security adviser Dina Powell all
disputed the validity of the story. But they did not call out
specific points in the story as untrue.

"All of you are familiar with the threat from ISIS," McMaster
said on Tuesday. "All of you are very familiar with the territory
it controls. If you were to say, 'Hey, from where do you think a
threat might come, from territory that ISIS controls,' you would
probably be able to name a few cities."

Shortly after, it
was reported that Israel was the source of the highly classified
information.

H.R. McMaster.AP

Then came the evening bombshell.

The Times reported that
Comey wrote a memo immediately after a meeting with Trump on
February 14 — a day after Flynn resigned as national security
adviser — that stated Trump suggested Comey should "let go" of
the FBI investigation into Flynn. The Times reported that Comey
kept a paper trail on Trump to document "what he perceived as the
president’s improper efforts to influence an ongoing
investigation."

"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting
Flynn go," Trump told Comey, according to the memo.

Legal experts said
outlined that the request, paired with the loyalty pledge and
his firing of Comey, amounted to a strong obstruction of justice
case. Obstruction of justice was the charge that led to former
President Richard Nixon's resignation.

"We've seen this movie before," Republican Sen.
John McCain
of Arizona said at a dinner for the International Republican
Institute. "It's reaching Watergate size and scale. This is not
good for the country."

"Look at the way I've been treated lately," he said. "Especially
by the media. No politician in history — and I say this with
great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly. You can't
let them get you down. You can't let the critics and the
naysayers get in the way of your dreams. I guess that's why,
thank you, I guess that's why we won."

By late afternoon came another
jaw-dropper: Rosenstein appointed a special counsel — former
FBI Director Robert Mueller — to oversee the Russia
investigations.

The Times also
reported Wednesday that Flynn told the Trump transition
team that he was under federal investigation prior to Trump
taking office for his paid lobbying for Turkey. Flynn was still
brought on as national security adviser.

Thursday, May 18

Trump was initially measured in response to the news of Mueller's
appointment. But he spent his early morning going off on Twitter about it.

"With all of the illegal acts that took place in the Clinton
campaign & Obama Administration, there was never a special
counsel appointed!" Trump
tweeted.

"This is the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in
American history!" he
continued.

"I believe it hurts our country terribly, because it shows we're
a divided, mixed-up, not-unified country," Trump said. "And we have very
important things to be doing right now, whether it's trade deals,
whether it's military, whether it's stopping nuclear — all of the
things that we discussed today. And I think this shows a very
divided country."

During a joint press conference with Colombian President Juan
Manuel Santos, Trump denied the validity of the claim made in the
Comey memo.

Just minutes later,
the Post reported that a senior White House official close to
Trump was now considered a "significant person of interest" in
the FBI's investigation.

CNN later reported
that White House attorneys were researching impeachment
procedures, although officials consider that to be a "distant"
and "unlikely" possibility.

Moving forward

Trump departed the US Friday to begin his lengthy first foreign
trip as president. Back home, it doesn't appear the stampede of
news stories is going to stop soon.

The White House's "inability to get ahead of events is
concerning," Conant said. "I mean, they need to get all the bad
information out yesterday. But the constant drip, drip, drip of
bad news is troubling. Because it makes it so much harder to move
on his agenda, which is what I care about as a Republican."

He added that "in the short term," it will "probably not" be easy
for the administration to move past the Russia-related
developments.

"Because we're in a full-fledged feeding frenzy," he said.
"However, I think that if they can put the special prosecutor to
the side and stop making news on the Russia story and then have a
successful trip overseas next week, I think he can come back in
10 days and hopefully be able to talk about something other than
Russia."

Matt Mackowiak, a GOP strategist and CEO of the Potomac Strategy
Group, told Business Insider that "it's fair to say" the "last 10
days have been pretty bad."

"I think Republicans were in something of a panic for much of
that time because it kept getting worse, and no one could really
see how to stabilize the situation," he said. "Now, as it turns
out, Rosenstein's decision to appoint a universally respected
special counsel ended up being not only a smart decision but one
that ended up being welcomed by Republicans."

"It now gives them opportunity to decline comment on the
investigation going forward," he continued. "It gives them
someone that they really trust and believe will do the right
thing in terms of the facts. And it probably, I would think,
would buy Trump and the Trump White House some time to deal with
not only the legal challenges they're facing, but also to start
restarting their legislative agenda."